Candidates Daisy Black, Bret Berlin and Kevin Burns before the vote.
Miami-Dade Democrats have a new chairman, Bret Berlin, our hard-charging state committeeman, and a new determination to face up to an issue of solidarity.
The Democratic Executive Committee elected Berlin Monday night on the first ballot over two challengers, Kevin Burns, the mayor of North Miami, and Daisy Black, the former mayor of El Portal. Berlin had 88 votes, to 37 for Burns and 8 for Black.
The meeting took place in an atmosphere of concern over a P. 1 report in the Sunday Miami Herald that laid out the distance between our two elected Democratic members of Congress, Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) and Kendrick Meek (FL-17), and the three Democrats challenging the three Republican incumbent members of Congress in the county.
This blog covered this in depth Sunday, and the topic was the talk of the lobby before the special election meeting began. The Executive Committee had to have the election to replace Joe Garcia, who resigned in February to run for Congress in District 25.
Kevin Burns brought up the issue during his campaign speech before the vote, saying, “I cannot believe two elected congresspeople have the nerve to stand up and say they’re not going to support their fellow Democrats.” This won strong applause from some 200 people in the American Legion hall. He proposed to “reach out and work together” to deal with the issue.
After the vote was announced, Berlin said in his acceptance remarks that he would use the next meeting in April to make sure that the county party strongly supports the three Democrats running against the incumbent Republicans.
“I too was appalled when I read in the Miami Herald that certain elected officials think that they have the right to anoint who can run and not run. That’s not their right. That’s our right,’ he said.
Berlin is taking up most of the last year of a four-year term as chair of the county party. Joe Garcia had held it for a year after Jimmy Morales resigned in early 2007, saying he did not have the time required to run the party in a crucial election cycle.
In the meantime, three strong candidates have emerged to run against Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, in Districts 21, 25 and 18, respectively. In addition to Joe Garcia, who’s taking on Mario Diaz-Balart, businesswoman Annette Taddeo is running against Ros-Lehtinen, and former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez is taking on Lincoln Diaz-Balart.
Berlin announced that the party raised over $35,000 at a fund-raiser last month, giving some seed money to get rolling in a busy election year.
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